Draper has entered into a collaboration with Bristol-Myers Squibb to develop a unique liver tissue model for screening the toxicity of drugs.

Draper will use its Human Organ Systems (HOS) platform—a microenvironment that can sustain human tissue organ models for several weeks of automated testing. Draper will array 96 independent single organ models in the high-throughput package in a version of its HOS platform named PREDICT-96. Using its platform, Draper will generate a unique liver model for Bristol-Myers Squibb to perform toxicity testing. The model could have the potential to study progression of liver diseases and to evaluate candidate therapeutics.
 
“The aim of our HOS microenvironment is to recapitulate human tissues, allowing researchers to measure tissue function more accurately and more quickly than in traditional preclinical models,” said Joseph L. Charest, Ph.D. Charest is head of HOS and in vitro model systems at Draper where he helps customers build artificial organ systems to test and refine new drugs.